


You And Whose Army

by stoprobbers



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Episode Related, F/M, Hospitals, Hurt/Comfort, Making Up, Missing Scene, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-09
Updated: 2019-09-09
Packaged: 2020-10-13 10:34:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20581082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stoprobbers/pseuds/stoprobbers
Summary: “We should go.” She glances behind them.“It’s a hospital,” Mike points out. “Maybe it’s just an ambulance.”The hospital is littered with bodies, smeared with blood. Someone must have noticed. Someone must have called the police. They can’t be here when the cops arrive.“We should go,” she repeats.





	You And Whose Army

**Author's Note:**

> _come on if you think_   
_come on if you think_   
_you can take us on_   
_you can take us on_   
_you and whose army?_   
_you and your cronies_   
_you forget so easy_

It takes her too long to register the sound in the distance. At first she thinks it’s just the world rushing back as her panic subsides. But her panic is not subsiding; she’s breathing hard and next to her Jonathan is doing the same, swaying slightly on his feet. 

Will turns to his brother, reaches his hand out and stops. Jonathan doesn’t notice; he’s deep in his own head, staring through the pavement, but Nancy does and frowns as Will draws his hand back.

The sound is still there, and growing louder by the second. And then she realizes: sirens.

“We should go.” She glances behind them.

“It’s a hospital,” Mike points out. “Maybe it’s just an ambulance.”

The hospital is littered with bodies, smeared with blood. Someone must have noticed. Someone must have called the police. They can’t be here when the cops arrive.

“We should go,” she repeats.

“Yeah,” Jonathan breathes, shakes his head to clear it. “I—Here.” He holds out a hand. “Give me the keys. I can drive.”

She’s vaguely aware that she’s shaking, pale and flushed at the same time, little more than adrenaline and fear given a human shape. And yet his eyes are glassy, and his forehead is bleeding; whatever happened to him alone in that room with Tom, it was bad. She faced a monster, but all things considered, she’s more fine than him.

She knows, because _he_ has the keys. They’re in his pocket. She left her purse in the car.

She tells him so and he just blinks at her in return.

“You can barely stand up,” she holds out her hand. “I’ll drive.“

They attempt to amble to the car, playing casual as best they can, and she tries not to stare at Jonathan, at the way he’s limping.

“What happened to your leg?” Will asks.

“Nothing,” Jonathan shakes his head. “My back just hurts. I’m fine.”

A lie. None of them are fine. Him least of all. Something hard comes into Will’s eyes but it’s gone before she can form a question.

They pile back in, Mike and Will taking the way back again, this time with no complaints, but Will keeps his eyes trained on the back of his brother’s head.

“Seatbelts,” she reminds them absently, and peels out of the parking lot just as the sirens’ screaming grows so loud it seems to be right on top of them, or somewhere deep inside her head.

She keeps Jonathan’s hand tight in hers, knuckles white and fingertips red, not so much steadying herself as she is hiding the shaking. The way his short nails dig into her flesh she knows he’s doing the same.

She can’t let go. If she lets go, she won’t just tremble, she’ll vibrate up into the sky and float away, untethered, uncontrolled. He is the only thing keeping her here, now.

Three squad cars speed past them. Four. Five.

“Where are we going?” Mike asks, and she finds she doesn’t know.

+++

It’s not until they get back to her house that she realizes there’s no way she can go home. Not when they just almost died, not when Jonathan is breathing shallowly through the pain next to her, not when she hasn’t had a chance to check him and hold him and tell him they’re okay now, that all that matters is that they’re still alive, that their fight was stupid, _so _stupid, now that she’s been reminded of the actual stakes of their lives.

No one else seems willing to part for the night, either, so they decide to go to the Byers’. The cabin is too small, her house is too crowded, and they’ve managed to keep the Sinclairs and the Hargroves in the dark, so why change that now.

They stop to get a change of clothes, to let her ask her mom if she can keep the car. They improvise an excuse, Mike and his friends have some dumb thing they want to do in the morning after this sleepover but she doesn’t mind driving them, after all what does she have to do now that she’s been fired? She’s wiped the smeared mascara from below her eyes but she doesn’t miss the way her mother’s eyes scan her sweaty skin and limp hair. She crosses her arms, trying to appear nonchalant, trying to ignore the growing ache under her left shoulder blade.

Maybe her mom thinks she and Jonathan are still fighting, maybe this is her way of giving her approval to take the time they need to make up, Nancy doesn’t know and doesn’t care. She’s just itching to get back to the car, to get back to the Byers’, to get somewhere safe so she can clean his wounds and make sure he did, in fact, make it out in one piece.

They both look like they’re in one piece but she knows better. Knows they need to check under the skin, too.

Lucas is climbing back into the car when she returns, wearing a fresh set of clothes. His backpack jingles and clangs and she wonders what he’s brought. Decides she probably doesn’t want to know.

She watches Jonathan out of the corner of her eye as Max gives her directions to her house. He’s leaning his head against the passenger window, eyes heavy but not totally shut, wincing every time they hit a patch of uneven pavement.

Max’s parents aren’t home and neither is Billy, and the girl is in and out in five minutes flat. As Nancy speeds towards the Byers’, a sense of impending relief builds inside her.

Jonathan reaches over and squeezes her knee, and she knows he feels it too.

Eleven drops down on the sofa as soon as they’re inside. Mike sits in the bend of her knees, hovering over her but not quite touching. Max gives Lucas a long, pointed look before sitting down in the easy chair. He perches on the arm beside her.

The silence in the house is screaming loud, or maybe it’s just the ringing in her ears, and she’s about to say something, _anything_ to break it when Max lunges for the remote and turns the television on. The sudden noise is both a comfort and a fright, and she jumps a little at it.

Will pauses in the middle of the room, eyes bouncing between his brother and her, Eleven and Mike and Max and Lucas, before heaving a sigh of his own.

“I’ll get the sleeping bags,” he says and Nancy is surprised to hear the young boy’s voice edged with anger. When Mike looks up his expression is distinctly guilty, too. She wonders what’s been going on between the two best friends; when she glances over at Jonathan he looks confused, too. Woozy, but confused.

“I’ll help,” he offers and goes to move but Will shakes his head.

“You look awful,” his little brother says, voice tight. “And you reek. You can use the shower first.”

“Yeah,” Lucas agrees, looking at both of them, frozen in the middle of the living room. “_I’ll_ help."

“Thanks,” Jonathan murmurs, and shuffles off down the hall. Nancy watches Will watch him go, shoulders high and tight. She wonders, truly, why he doesn’t follow. 

So she does instead, overnight bag in one hand, and is only mildly surprised when Will catches her wrist as she passes him.

“You need to check him for a concussion,” the younger boy murmurs to her, lips barely moving, eyes terrified. “His… his pupils.”

“I will,” she answers with a nod. Will’s eyes narrow just a little.

“What happened?” he asks in a harsh whisper. “What hurt him? Was it that… monster?”

“Sort of,” is the best she can do. “We’ll explain later, okay? Everything that happened. We should probably… clean up. First.”

“Yeah.” Will’s eyes dart to the hallway and then back to her. “If you need anything…”

“I’ll yell,” she promises, and only then does he let her go.

To her surprise Jonathan is not in the bedroom; she drops her bag and kicks off her shoes, wincing as the strap slides over the cuts they made on her ankles (she hates those shoes now, she’s decided), then goes to look for him. The door to the hallway bathroom is partially open, the light on. Peering through the gap she can see him leaning on the counter, breathing slowly.

“Jonathan?” she asks, pushing the door the rest of the way open, slipping in. Shuts it quietly behind her. He doesn’t speak but he opens his eyes and turns to look at her. He is sweaty, shiny, trembling slightly. Her heart leaps into her throat.

“Let me see,” she implores softly, pressing on his shoulders until he sits on the lid of the toilet with a thump. She stares down at him, hoping he thinks she’s just drinking him in instead of checking his pupils as his brother requested. His eyes are dark and his pupils are wide but they’re the same size and not any bigger than she thinks the light calls for. They look normal enough to satisfy and allow her to continue.

Carefully she runs her fingers through his hair, checking for breaks in the skin, in the bone. She finds a small lump here, a shallow dip there, but he doesn’t make any noise when she presses down so she moves on.

There’s a long scratch on his neck and a red mark too, a cut on his forehead above his eyebrow and he hisses when she touches it, hisses again when her hands return to his shoulders. She pulls his t-shirt collar carefully to the side; it only needs to move a few centimeters to reveal a scarlet bruise on his upper back.

“Jesus,” she breathes out, and he catches her hand, pulling it away.

“I’m okay,” he lies for what must be the hundredth time since they drove out of the hospital parking lot. “My turn.”

He doesn’t stand, just turns her arms over carefully, touching each of the tiny cuts made by shattering glass when Eleven threw that _thing_ out the window.

“You were trapped,” he murmurs. “I tried, I tried so hard, but if El wasn’t there—”

She grabs his hands, stopping his motions and his words, forcing herself to keep her breathing steady. “Don’t. She was there.”

“You know I would—”

“I know,” she can’t let him finish that sentence.

He looks at her, gaze finally steady, and takes a moment to squeeze her hands, then moves to her hips, running palms down her thighs and under her dress, pushing the fabric up. She takes the hint and pulls it over her head.

He doesn’t stop touching her, runs his fingertips over her stomach and ribs, eyes trained on her skin as he carefully turns her in a circle. She’s not sure exactly what he’s checking for – she got thrown around far less than him -- and it’s not until she’s facing him again and he presses his lips and then his cheek to her stomach, holding her tight, that she realizes he’s just making sure she is whole.

She returns her hands to his hair, holding him in place.

“I stabbed Tom in the throat,” he says, mostly into her bellybutton.

“I hit Bruce with a fire extinguisher. A few times.”

“He deserved it.” Jonathan chuckles dryly and tips his head up to look at her, resting his chin on her hip bone. “I’ve never killed anyone before.”

“Well, I certainly hope not.” She’s not sure where this humor is coming from; wonders if it’s the byproduct of the adrenaline high. Probably. She cups his cheeks. “He wasn’t a person anymore. Neither of them were. They were… something else.”

“Flayed. They were flayed.”

In medieval times people sentenced to flaying had their skin peeled off while they were still alive, a monstrous and torturous death of unimaginable cruelty. She’s seen drawings of it in history books. Almost despite herself she hopes whatever happened to Tom and Bruce wasn’t as bad as that. No one deserves that kind of death.

She doesn’t say any of that.

“We need to shower,” she tells him instead. “We’re filthy.”

“Yeah. You’ve still got monster drool on your arm,” he points out, but doesn’t move.

She strokes his hair again, even as she purses her lips at him, “Exactly,” and reaches past him to turn on the water. His grip doesn’t loosen.

“I’d do it again.” She’s not sure she’s ever heard him this serious. “If someone—if you were in danger—I’d do it again, Nancy.”

She doesn’t answer, trying to swallow past the lump that’s appeared in her throat. Instead she tugs at his t-shirt until it’s bunched under his armpits and he gives in, releasing her so she can pull it over his head. He rises, working his belt open as she finally gets the shower going, and when she turns back, ready to strip off her underwear and bra, the full scope of his damage is visible to her.

His back is mottled purple-green, with a solid red line where Bruce brought the stool down on him, so red she wonders if it’s actually a cut, if it broke the skin.

The bruising extends all the way down to his hips, and as he pushes his pants and underwear off in the same go she finds herself releasing a relieved sigh when she sees it doesn’t go further than that.

When she was a child and she scraped her knee her mother would always clean it carefully, kiss it gently and put a BandAid on to make it better. She finds she wants very much to do the same now, to kiss every inch of his damaged skin until it is healed back to its normal smooth paleness.

Then he turns to her, raises his eyebrows, and steps past her into the shower.

There are others waiting now, knocking on the door and asking if they’re finished, so they keep their movements efficient, intentional. With each swipe of the bar of soap she can feel her muscles tightening, protesting. She is going to hurt in the morning, she knows.

They wrap themselves in towels, pull extras out of the linen closet, tell Max it’s her turn, and retreat to Jonathan’s room. Nancy knows they should probably make the kids something to eat, be the adults in this situation, but his mother isn’t home and she’s tired to her core. They’re teenagers; they know how to make sandwiches for themselves.

They don’t bother with the light, just fumble around until they find something to sleep in and reach his bed.

It’s hastily made, barely made at all in fact, and she thinks about when she called him that morning, how long ago that feels. Together they pull back the covers carefully, climb under gingerly, and if her muscles are screaming like this he must be in agony.

He collapses next to her with a puff of relief, and she turns to face him, scanning his face in the dim light. Even after his shower his forehead is dark with bruising, with blood. She reaches out and slowly, carefully brushes his hair out of the way and runs her fingertips over the wound. He winces.

And just like that she is choking, she is drowning. There is a rock in her throat, blocking her windpipe, and there is panic squeezing her lungs tight, and there is Bruce’s voice in the dark, soft and mocking, calling _Marco!_

“Nancy,” Jonathan says and his voice is hoarse and tight and she throws herself across the inches between them and into his arms.

“Oh my god,” she manages between sobs, shoulders aching each time they heave. “Jonathan, oh my god—”

“I know,” he replies and his fingertips dig into her arms hard enough to bruise. “I know. I know, but we’re _alive_.”

It’s too much to hear, too much to acknowledge, so she presses her lips to his to quiet them both or speak in ways bigger than words can encompass, she’s not quite sure.

His hand immediately comes up to cup her cheek, and his knee slides between hers as he pulls her even tighter against him. She presses into him as well, dragging teeth over his lower lip, dipping her tongue into his mouth to taste that familiar combination of minty toothpaste and _him_, breathing deep through her nose to smell his skin and his soap.

Part of her aches for him, yearns and needs and _wants_, but more of her simply aches. As her tears subside so too does the final rush of panic, of adrenaline, and the ache moves past her muscles into her bones and then her soul. Every single ounce of energy feels drained from her cells.

Their kisses slow and the roar of blood in her ears quiets, and as it does she hears him whispering it, over and over, against her lips, between the shorter and sloppier pecks.

“I love you,” he’s saying, his nose and forehead resting against hers. “I love you, I love you.”

“I love you,” she replies, wishes she could open her eyes to look at him, to drink in his silhouette, but they feel like they’re made of lead so instead she moves her hand up his arm and to his cheek, tracing his features with her fingertips. “I love you, Jonathan, I love you.”

They keep whispering it until the words are nothing more than puffs of air on lips, until the puffs lose their shape and they drift into a dark, heavy, dreamless sleep together.

+++

Nancy watches the dark before her, breath shallow and fast. It’s hard to tell but she thinks she can see the edges of it starting to take shape, rising from where she assumes the floor is.

She can’t actually tell; she can’t actually see it. She can’t see anything. But she can hear it, the gelatinous pieces of its body coming together, morphing into something new, something big, something terrifying. She can hear it grow and there’s enough light, just enough light, that she can see it open its mouth, stretch its jaws, the endless rows of razor-sharp teeth just barely glinting mere feet from her.

She tries to take a step back but there’s nowhere to go and fear squeezes like a vise around her heart.

The creature, the _thing_, takes a step towards her and a noise follows it. She almost doesn’t hear it over her own breathing but it comes again a moment later, high and vulnerable. Not the monster’s roar.

Without thinking she holds up a hand, cocks her head; _hold on_. And the creature, it does. It stops. She closes her eyes to hear better, and it listens with her.

The sound again, and then another, slightly different. A moan maybe? Or, no, a cry. Almost. No, not a cry a—

A _whimper_.

She bolts awake with a gasp, sitting straight up in bed and biting back a moan at the bolt of pain that sends down her left side. Jonathan’s arm was heavy on her waist when she fell asleep but it’s not there now. None of him is, not even his toes which she so often wakes to find pressed against her calf, just a way of reassuring himself she’s next to him.

She looks beside her and the fuzzy shape resolves itself as her eyes adjust to the dark.

Jonathan has turned onto his stomach in the night, as he usually does, but now he is up on one hand, eyes glassy and cheeks pale, and he’s whimpering as he tries to free his legs from the blanket.

“What are you doing?!” she whispers and hopes it doesn’t come out too harsh.

“It hurts,” it comes out as a gasp.

“What hurts?” She can feel the panic rise again.

“My head, my back, my—everything.” He gives up, collapses back down on the mattress and squeezes his eyes shut tight, grimacing.

She wonders if it’s a trick of the dark or if his bruise really has darkened already. Wonders again what happened to him in that room with Tom.

“I’ll get you some Tylenol,” she says, helping him until he rolls onto his back.

“No,” he’s panting shallowly and it makes her heart squeezes with fear. “In my mom’s medicine cabinet there’s other pills. Stronger. From when Will got back from the Upside Down. They were too strong for him, but I don’t think she threw them out.”

“Okay. Stay here.”

With the door open there’s more light and she can see the smallest smile flash on his face just before it’s replaced by another grimace.

El and Max are curled up, sound asleep in Joyce’s bed but she tiptoes past them anyway, shuts the door gently before flicking on the light. It burns, makes her squint as she looks through the medicine cabinet, picking up prescription bottles and trying not to look too closely, pry too deeply, until she lands on one with Will’s name on it.

She’s not sure exactly what hydrocodone/paracetamol is, but it sounds like a painkiller and it’s prescribed to Will, so before she can wake anyone up she grabs it, turns off the light and nearly bashes her face in on the door frame sneaking out.

Jonathan is sitting up in bed again when she gets back, grimacing.

“What are you doing?!” she hisses, handing him the bottle. “Stay put, idiot, I’ll get water.”

The midnight shuffle from his room to kitchen is far more familiar and goes much smoother. He accepts the water she offers him with a shaking hand and quickly downs one of the pills, contemplates the bottle like he’s considering taking another one. Finally he bites a pill in half, swallows it dry and offers her the other piece.

She sits cross-legged on the bed next to him and ponders it.

“It either made Will sleep or sick,” he explains, settling back down. “Mom said it was too much for his system, just too strong. He’s so small. Or he was. He’s not, really, anymore, he’s taller than me now almost.”

She pops the pill and takes the water glass from him, washing down the bitter powder before setting it on his nightstand. He looks like he’s expecting her to lay back down, but she doesn’t. She keeps looking at him in the dark, the shape of his body, the paleness of his skin, the way his hair is sticking up like a riot from the scant hours of restless sleep.

His hand finds her bare thigh, squeezes. “Nancy—”

“I’m sorry,” she interrupts him. “For what I said in the car.”

“I know. You said.”

“I didn’t, though. And then we almost… so I’m sorry, Jonathan. I shouldn’t have said it like that. I was angry, and I was hurt, but I shouldn’t have said it like that. I know what you do for your family.”

“Me too.” His voice is soft, and she wishes she could see his eyes better. “I’m sorry too. I _know_ what you went through. I saw it. And I heard you, when you told me about it. I didn’t mean to make you feel like I wasn’t listening. I was just trying to help.”

“I know you were.”

“I didn’t mean to make it worse.”

“And I didn’t mean to take it out on you. I should have thought about you. I wasn’t thinking about you at all.”

He doesn’t respond to that, just stays silent in the dark. She counts the seconds and when she reaches a minute she starts to wonder if he hasn’t fallen back asleep. She can feel the pain under her shoulder blade receding, and something warm and comfortable taking its place, like when you’re floating in a warm bath. Her eyelids feel heavy again, too.

They’re starting to slip closed when he speaks. “We’ll be better next time.”

“Yes.” She is certain of this. “We will.”

“Good.” He tugs on her leg. “Lay down, you’re making me nervous.”

His words are a touch slurred and she knows the pills must be kicking in for him too. She slips back under the blankets and goes to settle next to him but he pushes at her, maneuvers her onto her side and slides tight against her back instead. She lets him get comfortable behind her, feels the press of his lips on the back of her neck.

He slides his arm over her stomach, finds her hand and laces their fingers tightly together.

“I can’t lose you, Nancy,” He speaks it into her hair. “I can’t do this without you.”

She squeezes his fingers. “Me neither.”

+++

Morning comes. She wakes before him, watching his chest rise and fall, each breath a reassurance, until his eyes blink open in the growing sunlight.

“Ugh, what time is it?” he mutters, words thick with sleep and shockingly normal. Like they didn’t almost die the day before. It makes her heart swell and she kisses him just because she can, just because they’re alive.

“Almost eight,” she answers, and sits up. “We should get dressed, get to the cabin.”

He sits too, wincing slightly, and she resists the urge to make him turn, to insist on inspecting his wounds again. The red mark on his throat, at least, has faded in the night. “How you feel?”

“Like my possessed former boss tried to kill me in an under-construction wing of a hospital,” he answers, deadpan, yawning. “But it doesn’t hurt as much as last night.”

“Good,” she sighs with relief and goes to throw the covers off her. Jonathan reaches out and catches her arm, stopping her.

“Hey,” his voice is deep and gravelly, “are we okay?”

She holds his gaze for a moment, saying nothing and hoping her eyes can convey what she still can’t quite put into words, then nods.

“Yes,” she answers decisively. “Now come on. We’ve got a monster to fight.”

**Author's Note:**

> we _needed_ this scene, duffs. maybe not exactly like this but _something_. this is my humble contribution. 
> 
> title/opening lyrics from radiohead's ["you and whose army"](https://victal.tumblr.com/post/63023405158/radiohead-you-and-whose-army) off _amnesiac_, which also kind of sounds like what i imagine jonathan and nancy's life forces were like after that battle. woozy, punchdrunk, and ready to fight.


End file.
